


The Haunting in the Witch House

by Sturzkampf



Category: Widdershins (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Prompt 20: Mystery, Prompt 29: Adventure, Prompt 30: Family, buggeruptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27118703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sturzkampf/pseuds/Sturzkampf
Summary: Rational and educated wizards have no time for ghosts. Ben discovers that ghosts don’t feel the same way about wizards
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6
Collections: Widdershins Fanworks Month Pieces





	1. Mystery

Benjamin Thackerey did not believe in ghosts. Such fantasies were delusions of the credulous, the superstitious and the ignorant. Every educated person knows that all the so-called cases of haunting have perfectly rational and scientific explanations such as rogue malforms, poorly imbued artefacts or the seepage of strong emotion into the fabric of a building over the course of many years. He kept reminding himself of that as he worked alone in the Witch House.

He had not noticed anything at first. The room had seemed perfect for his new study. It was large enough for his desk, bookcases and a comfortable armchair, but not so large it would be difficult to keep warm in the winter. There were high ceilings, large windows to let in the light, an ornate carved oak fireplace and it was next door to his library. No, _the_ library, he reminded himself. He must not take these new circumstances for granted. Wolfe had asked why he did not take the similar room on the other side of the house that looked out onto the street, rather than the weed-infested back garden. But of course, a room at the front of the house would be terribly noisy during the day, and he didn’t go into his study to spend his time staring out of the window. The front room would make a fine living room for them all. He wanted the privacy of the back room so he could work in peace and quiet.

The only problem with the room was the wallpaper. Interior décor was not normally something that Ben worried about or even noticed. It was just there. When his mother had asked him what colour the walls were painted in the council offices he’d lived in for six months so she could make him some proper matching curtains, he had to go and look. But for some reason this room had been left in a terrible state of neglect. It had obviously been unused and unheated even when the building had been a museum, causing the wallpaper to become mildewed and damp. In places it was peeling from the wall, and that was something Ben definitely could not tolerate. The wallpaper would have to be removed and the walls repainted. The annoying part was that where the wallpaper was damp it came away easily enough, but where it was not it stuck to the wall with grim determination. There was nothing for it but to roll up his sleeves and waste several days of his life removing perfectly good wallpaper. Suddenly the large room and its high ceilings did not seem such a good idea after all.

During the day, everything had been fine. Wolfe had come in to help – he’d been useful in getting to the higher parts of the wall that Ben could not reach without the constant imminent danger of falling off the step ladder. He also helped hang a sheet over the ornate fireplace, so it would not get covered by fragments of wallpaper and splashed with paint. After an hour or so he became bored and went off to see how Mal was faring with Nyree. The Witch of Widdershins was still receiving intensive instruction from his fellow witches, and although he was doubtlessly benefiting from his belated education – at least that’s what the Arpana and Nyree kept telling him – his two fellow residents of the Witch House had standing instructions to interrupt the lessons at regular intervals to give him a break from study and the chance to sneak out for a quick roll-up.

Ben persevered with the scraping. More than once he wished that they could hire a decorator to do the work, but that would be up the man who held the purse strings now. O’Malley had not offered, and Ben was far too proud to ask. Anyway, all the Polish tradesmen were still booked up for months in advance, repairing all the damage caused by the Seven Deadly Sins Incident. So here he was, wasting time scrapping at wallpaper when he could have been reading a good book.

Wolfe did not come back to help, although he did cook the dinner. Afterwards, he and Mal decided to see Nyree back to the anchor and then go up the pub. Did Ben want to come? He declined. He knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until all that wretched wallpaper had gone. One more day and then he could start on the painting, and once that was done, he could move the new furniture into his study and _then_ he could finally get on with something productive. Anyway, Nyree still had a distressing lack of regard for what constituted acceptable standards of dress and she not only knew that made Ben uncomfortable, but she also took a delight in teasing him about it at every opportunity. Because she could.

It was when Ben got back to the empty room that the trouble began. He heard the front door close behind Wolfe and Mal and settled down to at least another hour of tedium. It was getting dark, but the room was illuminated by a new oil lamp, burning good quality whale oil that threw a fine white light. Such extravagance, but so welcome after years of squinting at tiny print by the light of a lamp burning cheap rendered fat.

As night fell, Ben began to have an irrational feeling that he was not alone in the room. When he faced the wall with his back to the room he became more and more certain that there was someone standing behind him. Someone watching him with ill intent. There was no sound of anyone there. Nothing to see. When he looked round the room was empty and he was alone. There was no disturbance in the growing layer of shredded paper that littered the floor. As the night grew darker the disquieting feelings grew. At first Ben tried to dismiss them. He was not some child scared of being alone in an old house at night. But soon they became so strong it became difficult to work without turning round every few minutes to see who was there.

He tried to rationalise his imaginings. Assuming this was not an incipient softening of the brain, what could be causing this? His first thought was some malform. O’Malley attracted them in large numbers, but they were usually annoyingly noticeable, even if they were invisible, and by their nature they did not transfer the emotion from which they were fashioned on to humans. The other obvious answer was that something in the room was imbued. This was the Witch House after all. It was strange that he had felt nothing during the day, even when he had been working alone. He had never heard of an imbuing that only worked at night, but he knew that witches don’t bother to play by the rules. He tried a reading:

“ _Lecta Phasmia_.”

There, nothing at all. Not even any residual imbuing. Not surprising really, because most of the structure of the house was relatively new, no more than about twenty years old, as was obvious at a glance. During the time of the Commonwealth the original house had been burned down after the last witch of Widdershins was persuaded to resign his position and emigrate to Ecuador by a crowd of angry townsfolk with pitchforks and burning torches. After that, the house had been a shunned and abandoned ruin for over a century. At the end of the war, an entrepreneur from London had rebuilt it in a modern ‘antique’ style with anachronistic creosoted black timber frames, straight edges and no cantilevered overhang for the upper stories, and opened The ‘Widdershins Witch Museum’. It was not a commercial success. The entrepreneur’s mistake had been to portray the witches as wicked and destructive people, a blight on the community. Yorkshire folk have long but selective memories and they were not having some foreigner coming to Widdershins and say bad things about their witches. Only they were allowed to do that.

Ben went back to his wallpaper, but five minutes later, the urge to turn around became overwhelming. And worse was the feeling that he did not want to turn round because whatever was in the room with him was something a rational man did not want to see. In the end he had to give in and look at the empty room that contained nothing more terrible than a shocking mess of shredded wallpaper. This was starting to get annoying. Perhaps his reading had missed something – some unwisely imbued museum exhibit for instance. He could hear the little devil on his left shoulder shouting ‘DUFF DEGREE! DUFF DEGREE!’ in his ear. He went round the room, performing readings. Still nothing. Nothing anywhere. He frowned. In a place like this you might expect _something_. Widdershins is never completely magically ‘quiet’, any more than the bustling town was ever completely silent. But in this room there was no background susurrus of magic. It was the equivalent of the terrible night-time absolute mute stillness of the countryside.

Ben wondered if perhaps this was not the house, but himself. If the feeling of an unseen presence was softening of his brain, perhaps that meant his puny wellspring of magic had finally dried up, and he had ceased to be a wizard. It was an irrational fear, but it had often kept him awake at night ever since he had first known that he was a wizard. Seized with momentary panic, he brought forth a simple spell of illumination. The cold flame fluttered in his hand and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Once again, he turned back to the wall to continue his work, but the feeling of someone - something - standing directly behind him was even worse. After a minute he spun round suddenly, trying to catch the mysterious watcher before it could hide. There was nothing there, of course. This was ridiculous. He was not going to let these irrational imaginings beat him. He walked next door to his - to _the_ library. When he turned his back to the room to read the titles of the spines of the books, he felt none of the unpleasant sensations he had felt in the empty room. He took down a reference book to check a spell.

His memory refreshed, Ben went back to the empty room, cleared a space on the floor with his broom and chalked a circle on the bare floorboards. This was an unusual spell and not one that is tried often. Not a summoning, but an enhanced detection without conduit or offering, used to amplify the reading from weak or distant summons. He sat down cross-legged in the centre of the circle and began the incantation. The glowing wall of the spell formed around the circle; a peculiar off-white that reflected its non-specific function. Ben attuned his senses to the reading. Nothing. Again, too much of nothing. Not even the background hiss of emotions from the imbued items he knew were in the house or the random emotional whispers of people passing in the street. Surely, he had not miscast the spell? If that were the case, the stable circle walls would never have formed in the first place.

Suddenly the walls of the spell circle shuddered as if from a blow. Then again, harder this time. The walls flexed. This was impossible. The walls were merely beams of light, like the rays from his lamp. How could something strike and bend them as though they had solid form? Then a third blow, and the walls of the circle shattered like glass. Ben had never seen anything like it. He had seen plenty of summoning circles come apart of course, often while he was doing the summoning, but when a spell was miscast the walls of light just spluttered and died like a lamp running out of oil. Now the walls disintegrated into jagged fragments that spun through the room. Ben felt a cold chill as some of them passed through his body, although thankfully they did not do any physical damage. He sprang to his feet, his brow running with a cold sweat of fear. The spell circle had been shattered too. The chalk diagram remained on the floor, but it had been broken into fragments, as though the circle too had been made of glass and parts of the chalk marks had been scattered over the floor without disturbing the floorboards. Each fragment was still perfectly formed, with the runes and arcs of circle intact and unsmudged, exactly as though he had chalked them on the floorboards in that position.

And now there was a noise in the room, coming from the fireplace. A droning sound, at first almost too faint to hear but gradually becoming louder. No, not louder. _Nearer_. And as it did so, Ben could hear modulations in the sound. He could almost imagine it was a voice chanting in a language unlike any he had ever heard. He was not sure it even was a language, but he was sure that the sound came from no human throat. It sounded as though some creature without properly formed vocal cords was trying to speak.

The sheet in front of the carved fireplace was moving. Ben’s rational mind clung to the desperate explanation that the sound and movement was only the wind blowing down the chimney. But then the sheet bulged outwards, as though there was a person standing behind it, even though Ben knew there was no room between the sheet and the wall. No, not like a person standing behind a sheet. That would only show a vague outline. The sheet was deforming in an impossible manner, like a sheet of rubber stretching against someone straining to get through it, showing details of the top half of the person’s torso leaning out of the wall, with arms stretching out towards Ben’s throat. Ben backed away in horror, utterly failing to remember all the emergency holding and desummoning spells he had found so difficult to master at Oxford. The good light from the lamp showed the figure in far too much detail. The arms seemed too long for the body and the torso seemed too close to the ground, as though the legs hidden within the wall were too short in proportion. The head was curiously deformed, with a receding sloping forehead, but a protruding jaw that might almost have been a muzzle. But of features behind the stretched cloth across the face there was no sign. The figure grouped blindly and maliciously towards Ben, but was unable to reach him; it could not leave the wall. Then, slowly, it faded away, like a deflating balloon. The sheet relaxed back into a simple piece of threadbare linen hanging from the picture rail.

Very carefully, like a rational man, Ben took the oil lamp and left the empty room, locking the door behind him. He went downstairs and put on his outside coat. He turned out the lamp, walked out of the front door of the Witch House and around the corner to the pub where Wolfe and Mal had gone. He walked straight up to the bar and ordered a double whisky.

“Glad ye could come!” shouted Mal from across the room. “Put it on me tab!”

Ben took his drink over to his friends’ table and sat down.

“Are you feeling alright?” asked Wolfe in concern. It was not just the thousand-yard stare that worried him. Ben was wearing his good coat but had not changed out of his work clothes before leaving the house. Something indeed must be seriously wrong.

Ben drained his glass of whisky in single draft. Then he took a deep breath and emitted a very long, very loud scream.

Jack O’Malley raised his eyebrows and took a long draw on his roll-up.

“Guessin’ tha’s a no then.”


	2. Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attempts to remove the ghost are not going well

“Tha’s another pub we can’t go back to,” complained Jack O’Malley. “We’re startin’ to run out.”

“Come now,” replied Wolfe. “The landlord did not throw us out in the end, after we explained that our friend had a nasty shock. And you told him that you are the new Witch of Widdershins.”

“Only after O’Malley threatened to tear his soul out,” added Ben. “From now on you can be sure of a friendly reception there.”

“All tha’ bowin’ an’ scrapin’ cos’ they’re frightened o’ me? Nah. Tha’s worse than getting’ barred.”

The three friends were making their way back to the Witch House. In truth, none of them were entirely sober.

“Did ye need to scream like tha’?” continued Mal. “It were so embarrassin’ like. Reminds me of the time me Aunty Colleen were stuck down a ‘ole in the ground in the dark with insects crawling all over her.”

“She does not like insects?” asked Wolfe.

“Nah. Also she were scared o’ the dark too. An’ she din like bein’ shut in.”

“Claustrophobia?” said Ben.

“Aye, guess.”

“I can see that would have been quite a traumatic experience for her.”

“I did not know you had family,” said Wolfe.

“Nah, not really mine. Ma used to tell me tales about me Aunty Colleen – ‘ow she used to go treasure ‘untin’ in caves an’ tunnels an’ stuff. The way Ma tol’ it, it were a long time ago. Dun even know if it were real, or it were only stories Ma used to make up for me when we were on the road.”

They turned the corner of the street and arrived back at the Witch House. Ben took the key out of his pocket, but despite the unaccustomed fortification of three double whiskys, he was reluctant to go back inside.

“Come Ben,” said Wolfe. “Let us face thus _geist_ together. A figure in a sheet you say? That does not sound so terrible.”

“Ye sure it weren’t Cap’n Barber in ‘er nightie, come t’ pay ye another visit?” asked Mal with a snigger. Ben reddened at the reminder of the embarrassing misunderstanding (see _The Hedgehog of the Baskertons_ ). 

“It was more than that,” he mumbled. “It wasn’t what I saw, so much as what I felt. I can’t explain it. I just knew I didn’t want to be in the house. But you are right. We can’t let it beat us.”

He unlocked the door and walked in, his two companions right behind him. He felt the darkness closing in around him, but without the feeling of malice he had experienced before. It was only perfectly normal nyctophobia, of no consequence to a rational trained wizard. He crossed the room, found the Congreves on the mantlepiece after a moment’s fumbling and lit the oil lamp. The good white light flooded the room dispelling the shadows and Ben’s unreasoning fears. He was reminded of the parable of the Circle of Light. How the imaginations of the first humans had filled the darkness of the night with monsters. Then one day, they had discovered fire. That night they illuminated their camp with a pile of burning branches and found that the monsters were banished by the Circle of Light. From that day, the Circle of the Light of civilisation had grown, a bit more each day, and is it grew the monsters of superstition and ignorance and evil were pushed further and further into the shadows. But always the monsters seek to push back to extinguish the light and plunge the world back into darkness and oblivion where they can rule unchallenged once more.

“There, that is not so bad,” said Wolfe happily.

“Nah, not as bad as I thought,” agreed Mal, who, despite several pints of good Yorkshire ale, had been more unsettled by Ben’s story than he wanted to admit. He lit a nerve-steadying roll-up from the lamp.

“Are we ready to face the room upstairs?”

“Y-yes.”

“Aye, le’s do it, afore we sober up. Ye can go first.”

Wolfe led the way cautiously up the stairs, to the closed door of the dreaded haunted room. They waited while Ben fumbled for the key. Mal scowled.

“Ye takin’ the piss or wha’?” Ben and Wolfe looked at him in puzzlement. “Where’s the bloody door then?”

“Ah… you mean this door?” asked Wolfe. The one we’re standing in front of?”

“There ent no door! Tha’s th’ bloody wall!” exclained Mal, suddenly very angry. He thumped the place where the door was. “All this talk o’ ghosts an’ people watchin’ ye! Yer windin’ me up! In me own ‘ouse! The pair of ye can bugger off!” With that he turned on his heel and strode off down the corridor. His bedroom door slammed angrily behind him. Ben and Wolfe were left staring after him, their mouths open in amazement. Not only at Mal’s sudden flare of temper, which was in truth not so surprising, but by the fact that when he had struck the door in front of them, they had not heard the rap of a fist striking wood, but the dull thump of a plastered wall. They looked at each other. Then they looked back at the door. Wolfe tentatively reached out his hand and gently rapped on the panels. They heard the sound of knocking on wood. The fear flashed through both their minds that an eldritch voice from within would bid them enter, but all was silent inside the room. Ben moved to unlock the door, but Wolfe laid a restraining hand on his arm.

“Ah, I think perhaps that we should not wake a sleeping dog tonight. Let us face this puzzle again in the morning when we are refreshed. And it is light. And perhaps it will be better if we are sober after all.” Ben nodded in agreement, and the two of them went to their bedrooms. They both locked their doors behind them.

\--------------*

“A ghost! Hahahahahaha! There’s no such things as ghosts! Never had you down for a superstitious type, Benjy! Would you like to buy some shares in the Botany Bay bridge?”

Ben, unhappy and embarrassed, concentrated on his breakfast. Nyree, the Witch of Tapa Tohunga Motu, had not been impressed by the story of his adventures the previous evening. She had arrived ridiculously early for today’s lesson with Mal. Of course, the time difference made ‘ridiculously early’ in Yorkshire ‘early evening’ at the third anchor. Nyree had never seen the need to consider the convenience of others when she made plans. Fortunately, Wolfe and Ben were already up, decently dressed and preparing breakfast, even if Wolfe was valiantly struggling with a hangover. Mal was not at all pleased at being dragged out of bed by the hammering on his door in the ‘middle of the night’, and was grumbling in a corner with a growing pile of roll-up dogends and a large cup of coffee while Nyree consumed most of the bacon and eggs Wolfe had cooked for the three of them.

Nyree had donned her ‘respectable’ cloak to walk the short distance from the anchor to the Witch House in order to avoid complaints, but underneath she still had on the skimpy dress that she habitually wore on Tapa Tohunga Motu, which frankly would have been risqué for the beach, let alone walking the streets of a reputable Yorkshire town. She wore the cloak under protest, mostly because Arpana told her to, but she took it off as soon as she was indoors, because, as she was fond of telling Mal, there’s no point being a Witch if you have to obey other people’s rules.

Mal of course took no notice of all the bare flesh. Wolfe was skilled at admiring a young lady’s figure while pretending not to notice, but making sure the young lady was aware of him pretending not to notice. Ben, on the other hand, was completely flustered, and Nyree delighted in making him as uncomfortable as possible by hitching up her skirt to give a tantalising glimpse of her bare knees whenever he looked in her direction.

The Island Witch wiped the remains of the last fried egg from her face with the tablecloth.

“Come on,” she said to Mal. “Let’s go and see what’s up there.” Mal scowled at her and flicked a dogend into the fireplace.

“Las’ night there weren’t even a door there.”

“Not that you could see,” said Wolfe. “But it was there for us.”

“Le’s go and look at the wall then.” Together they all went upstairs to the terrible door of the haunted room.

“Can you see it now?” Wolfe asked Mal.

“Aye, i’s there all right. Y’sure this is the same place?”

“You sure you weren’t so drunk last night you might have missed it?” asked Nyree with a grin, which broadened in response to Mal’s rude gesture.

Ben turned the key in the lock but didn’t open the door.

“Now you’re here, we should go in and investigate together,” he suggested

“No, you go downstairs where it’s safe and let me deal with it,” said Nyree, tilting her ankle to make sure Ben got the full benefit of her scandalously bare calves. “I’m the witch. You’re only a wizard. Almost.”

“But I thought perhaps I could…”

“Hahaha! Do what exactly? You think you’ll be any use if there’s something dangerous in there? You’ll be worse than useless, because when you will start screaming when you see the monster, I’ll have to protect you as well as fighting it, see?”

Ben saw. The familiar feeling of complete uselessness filled his mind. He turned and slunk away down the stairs.

“Shall we?” Nyree asked Mal.

“Nah, dun fancy it,” he muttered. “I might start screamin’ an’ get in yer way, an’ all.” Nyree gave him a surprised look. She sniffed the air and realised she might have misread the room. Even the ever-cheerful Wolfe had a scowl on his face.

“Er… right then,” she said. “I’ll er… just go in and sort it out should I?”

“Aye, ye do that.” Mal and Wolfe turned their backs on her and followed Ben back downstairs.

They found Ben in the main hall, slumped unhappily on one of the couches they’d set up for clients. Mal made an attempt to clear up his mess, picking up the discarded dog ends off the floor and putting them in the large ashtray that Ben had bought for him. He couldn’t look his friend in the eye.

“Sorry ‘bout that.”

“I don’t see what you have to apologise for,” said Ben. “She’s perfectly right. What use could I possibly be?”

“That is no reason for her to speak to you like that,” said Wolfe. “Even if she is a Witch, she might at least…”

They all jumped at a shrill scream from upstairs. There was the sound of fast running bare feet thumping on the floorboards above them and then pounding down the stairs. Still screaming, Nyree rushed through the hall and out through the front door without stopping or even bothering to put on her respectable cloak. Despite her traditional build, she was capable of a fine turn of speed when the occasion arose. They heard the shrill scream receding down the street. Ben wondered how she managed to maintain the continuous sound without pausing to take a breath. It must be a Witch thing he decided.

The three friends looked at each other in bewilderment.

“Ah, friend Ben,” said Wolfe at last. “Clearly whatever was in that room is more formidable than we thought.”

“I did try and tell you that.”

“Dunno,” said O’Malley. “Mebbe she’s seen a mouse or summin’.”

“Surely not.”

“She’s a girl so ye never…. Ow.” He winced and clutched his head in pain.

“What is wrong? Is it some evil influence from upstairs?”

“Nah, I think she’s made it as far as the… ow… anchor and she wants to get ‘ome. I’d better get… ow… round there before she… ow, bloody hell… do my head in by hammerin’ on me door.” He grabbed Nyree’s respectable cloak and rushed from the house, still wincing.

\------------------*

Thirty minutes later Mal returned to the Witch House. He could have been back sooner, but he correctly reasoned that if he walked slowly and took the long way home, Ben and Wolfe would have done the washing up and put the breakfast things away by the time he arrived.

“How was Ms Nyree?” Wolfe asked him.

“Fine,” he replied.

“Are you sure?” said Ben suspiciously. “she did not seem ‘fine’ to me.”

“Aye, she were a bit skittish. Reckon she’ll be a’right now she’s ‘ome. Mountain’ll probably drop in for a chat wi ‘er an’ bring ‘er some biscuits.”

“Did she say what scared her so?”

“Nah, not really. Only thing she kept sayin’ were ‘whirlpool’.

“Whirlpool?”

“Aye, over an’ over. Dunno what she were on about.”

Ben frowned. That word pulled at something in his memory that he could not quite remember, and not in a good way.

“And what now?” asked Wolfe.

“Looks like I got the day off,” said Mal happily. “How about a walk over to the _Folly_ for dinner? They got ‘ _Black Sheep_ ’ on as guest ale.”

“No, I feel we should investigate this ghost,” said Wolfe. “In daylight. Ben says that it is not active then.”

“Tell tha’ to Nyree. Tha’ room weren’t used before were it? We got plenty more – more’n we need. ‘ow ‘bout we keep the door locked an’ forget about it.”

“No,” replied Ben. We must confront whatever is in there and put it to rest once and for all. We can’t live here with that – thing. Who knows how long the room will contain it?”

They all looked at each other, knowing that Ben was right, but not feeling any enthusiasm for an Adventure.

“Mebbe another cup o’ tea first?” suggested Mal hopefully, but Wolfe was already striding towards the stairs, armed with the poker from the fireplace, Ben close behind him.

Nyree had not bothered to close the door behind her when she fled the haunted room, which was bad procedure but understandable given the circumstances. The three of them peered through the doorway uncertainly.

“Do _you_ think it is safe during the day?” asked Wolfe.

“We’ve all been here before without any ill effects,” replied Ben.

“Yet Ms Nyree seemed most disturbed.”

“My use of magic may have summoned something.”

“But you said that you only cast a simple enhanced reading.”

“Yes, but perhaps that awakened something, attracted its attention.”

“Then let us see what is there.”

Wolfe strode inside, the poker at the ready. The room was empty, apart from the step ladder in the corner and the shredded paper littering the bare floor. He felt no feeling of any malign spirit. He wondered if this was all an elaborate practical joke Ben was playing on Nyree in revenge for her constant teasing. He dismissed this idea out of hand. Whatever else you could say about Ben, he was the last person who would ever play a practical joke, or even understand the concept. Then he saw the fragments of the magic circle, the arcs and runes all carefully chalked on the undisturbed floorboards but scattered across the cleared space, and he knew that this was something outside of his everyday experience. Given his experiences since he had arrived in Widdershins, that was a pretty high bar. Ben followed warily. After two steps he gasped and staggered, almost sinking to his knees.

“Ben!” Wolfe dropped the poker and rushed over and supported Ben before he collapsed. Immediately he felt the malign presence too, an unseen entity of malice, pushing down on his mind, a force of pure hatred.

“Ye a’right?” asked Mal, coming to his aid. “Ye look a bit…”. Immediately he stepped across the threshold he stopped, and his eyes widened in horror.

“It’s…” he began, and then collapsed face down, unconscious amid the shredded wallpaper.

\-------------*

_Jack O’Malley watches the doctors trying to revive him. This must be the hospital he thinks, although he’s never been here before. Hospitals aren’t good places for someone with his talent. From where he’s standing he can’t get a good view of what the doctors are doing to his body lying on the bed, but somehow he’s sure they’re doing a good job, even though he can see from their spirits that they’re young and full of doubt. ‘Probably time to get back inside’ he thinks._

_A distinguished grey-haired gentleman with a pince-nez and a small goatee walks into the room, followed by half-a-dozen students. Jack can see from the respect of the junior doctors and the awe of the students that this is a great and important man - a senior consultant. The doctors trying to revive Jack’s body step aside so he can make his examination. The Great Man hardly gives Jack’s body a glance._

_‘Ah yes’, he says. ‘This poor fellow is beyond our help I’m afraid. You’ve done your best, but you can’t win them all. Cover him up and call a porter to wheel him to the mortuary’. Jack can see the disappointment of the junior doctors, but also the relief that a difficult decision has been made for them. But also the uncertainty too. They would have kept going with the resuscitation a little longer. Jack scowls at the Great Man. ‘Bastard’, he thinks. ‘I coulda made if it weren’t for you’. He can see that the Great Man wants to show off in front of the students – to be the expert making the difficult call of life and death with complete confidence. The Great Man walks off with his adoring entourage._

_Jack is left looking at his dead body, without much interest. He’s not going to be needing it anymore. Out of habit he reaches for his tobacco pouch to make a roll-up and realises that for the first time since he was 14 years old, he doesn’t actually need to smoke. He’s not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, but he’s certainly going to miss the ritual._

_He wanders off into the hospital wondering vaguely what happens next. No-one is aware of him. He supposes he’s turned into a ghost. Perhaps it will be entertaining to go back to the Witch House and see how they react when they hear that he’s died. Or maybe see if he can talk to Ben’s ghost in the empty room. Even do a bit of haunting of his own. He wonders if his friend the Purple Hippo of Happiness would still be able to see him, and whether he will be able to see it. There don’t seem to be any buggerups around, which is unusual for Widdershins._

_As he walks down the corridor, a man sitting on the stairs wishes him good morning._

_‘Mornin’’ replies Jack. ‘Ye can see me then?’_

_‘Almost,’ says the man’._

_‘Ye a ghost too?’ says Jack._

_‘No,’ says the man, ‘but I can sort of see you’._

_Jack walks out of the hospital into a large well-tended parkland with lots of flowerbeds. People are sitting around having picnics or taking a stroll, although none of them are aware of Jack. He keeps walking. It all seems very familiar. It does not occur to him that he has never seen any of it before._

_Jack comes to a high hedge at the edge of the park. There’s a gap in the hedge that’s blocked by a gate. ‘Strange’, he thinks, ‘you could always get through here before’. He pushes at the gate and finds that he can walk straight through it. He’s a ghost now. He steps out of the warmth of the spring light into cold autumn darkness. Everything is damp and dying on the other side of the gate. There are no stars in the sky, nor moon nor any clouds. The deep impenetrable black above and the stale air feels more like being underground than outside at night._

_He keeps walking. A man walks past him, going in the opposite direction._

_‘You out too?’ asks the man._

_“Aye, guess so,” says Jack._

_“He doesn’t like us being out,” says the man, “but it’s easy enough to sneak past once you get the hang of it.” The man walks off._

_Jack comes to the edge of a pit, stretching down into the darkness. Not a shaft like the Anchor Well, but a great pit, perhaps a quarter of a mile across. Around the walls are paths leading into the depths, not a simple spiral down to the bottom like the Widdershins viewing platform, but a maze of pathways that twist and turn and branch down into the darkness. A labyrinth in which a soul could get lost for eternity and never find its way out again. And on the dark paths are hundreds of baleful pairs of red eyes staring up at him with malice in their hearts._

\----------------*

“ _Prima_ , I think he is waking up.”

Mal struggled awake. It took him a few moments to realise that he was not dead after all. He wondered if it this was a good thing or not. As if to emphasise the fact, he felt a stab of pain from his hung-over brain and a sudden urgent need for a roll-up.

“Are you alright?” asked Wolfe, in a worried tone.

“Aye, I’m fine. Where’s me baccy pouch?”

“I’ll make some tea,” said Ben, unsuccessfully trying to keep the concern out of his voice.

Mal sat up and found he was lying on the landing, just outside the haunted room.

“Wha’ ‘appened?”

“I am not sure,” replied Wolfe. “You walked into the room and you passed out. We carried you out and you woke up.”

“’ow long ‘ave I been out? Ye ent taken me t’ th’ ‘ospital or nuffin’?”

“No, you were only out for a few minutes,” said Ben. “Why? Are you unwell? Do you need a doctor?”

“Nah, I’m fine.” He winced as he tried to stand. “’cept for the ‘angover. ‘ad worse.”

“Let’s get downstairs.” Mal made it back to the living room, although he was still a little unsteady on his feet. After two roll-ups and a cup of tea, he began to feel his old self again. The Purple Hippo of Happiness, sensing something was amiss, curled up in his lap and went to sleep, and that helped too.

The three friends wondered what they should do next.

“We all felt something in that room,” said Ben, “and it has the worst effect on O’Malley, some effect on me and hardly any on Wolfe.”

“I would not say that,” said Wolfe. “I too felt such a feeling of malice as I have never felt before.”

“But you did not feel it at once as we did. Why would that be I wonder?”

“Could that have been Wrath? We are near the anchor, and it may still bear a personal grudge. Perhaps more against you and Mal than me.”

“No, that was different. Wrath was – frightening – but it was focussed – an embodied emotion. This was more like a vast intellect that wanted to extinguish the light of our minds. And it didn’t feel personal. It wanted to destroy _everything_.”

“Aye,” added Mal, almost back to normal after his third recuperative roll-up. “Wha’ever’s in there hates us like ‘ell. But ’s not like a summons. ‘s more…” he struggled for the right words. “’s got more bits in it.”

“You mean it’s more complicated. Like a person?”

“Aye. But this weren’t a person. This were summin’ a lot worse.”

“Did you see anything before you passed out? You said…”

“Aye, it were someone’s arm, stretchin’out towards me. Only it weren’t an arm, more like… an outline.”

“How do you mean?”

“The arm weren’t there, but I could see where it were. It were the bit around the edge that were there.”

“Like an aura around an invisible object perhaps? How strange.”

“Why did you ask us if we had taken you to the hospital?” asked Wolfe.

Mal told his friends what he had seen in his nightmare. When Mal reached the part about the pit stretching down into the darkness the colour drained from Ben’s face, which scared Wolfe more than anything that had happened in the haunted room.

“What is wrong?” he asked. “Do you know where Mal has been?” Ben didn’t answer directly.

“When did you feel the effect of the entity in the room?” he asked Wolfe.

“Ah… when I came to help you. You think the _geist_ was enraged by my compassion?”

“No, I think you only felt the effect after you dropped the poker.”

“Why…”

“It’s easy to forget that English isn’t Nyree’s native language,” continued Ben, softly. “And of course, she’s never had any formal training in wizardry, so she wouldn’t know the word. She didn’t mean whirlpool. What she meant was Maelstrom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find the stories about Mal’s Aunt Colleen here (http://marblegate.webcomic.ws/), including the specific incident he refers to here (http://marblegate.webcomic.ws/comics/173/).  
> Elements of this story are = ahem – inspired by the ghost stories of M.R. James, and also by this great piece of fan art. https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/fanart-time


	3. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When there is something weird and it does not look good, who are you going to call?_

“Maelstrom?” asked Wolfe. “What is…”

He was interrupted by a knock on the door, which sent a chill of irrational fear down their spines. It wasn’t that a knock on the door should have been that disturbing an experience. A steady stream of people came seeking the expertise of Thackeray’s Malform Removals (Ben still resists changing the brand to Witch of Widdershins Malform Management) but this was not the embarrassed tentative knock or the panicked hammering of the typical customer. Neither was it the polite knock of the constant stream of visitors all hoping for an audience with the Witch of Widdershins. No, this was the assertive knock of someone important who has every right to be granted admission and however is inside had better look lively and open this door right now or there is going to be trouble.

Ben was already on his feet to answer the imperative summons when it came again, accompanied by a familiar voice.

“Benjy! Are you in there? I haven’t got all day!”

Ben rolled his eyes. Of course, there was only one person who knocked like that. He threw open the door.

“Vee! What are you doing here?” Verity Cunningham, The World’s Greatest Hunter brushed past him.

“I’m here to solve your problem of course! Which part of ‘Bounty Hunter’ do you not understand?!”

Wolfe frowned. “But how do you know…?”

“Which part of the World’s Greatest Bounty Hunter did you not understand?! If you wait until _dilettantes_ like Harriet realise that’s somethings amiss, you’ll never get anywhere!” She reached into the pocket of her waistcoat and produced a small but intricate device, like an astrolabe composed of a multitude of spinning, humming gears. “With my genius for engineering, I created this device that instantly alerts me to any ol… any magical threats in the area. See?” She held out the device so Wolfe could see the tiny dial marked from one to ten, with its needle pointing to the number nine, making sure to push out her chest for his benefit.

“Only a 9?” asked Wolfe, pretending not to admire Verity’s figure. “Things could be worse.”

“Nothing is ever a ten,” she answered, pretending not to notice Wolfe pretending not to notice, but making sure he noticed her noticing. “Things can always get worse.”

There was something about the device that made Ben uneasy, but he could not put his finger on what it was. There was something glittering at its heart that looked out of place amid the whirling machined brass. When he leaned in for a closer look, Verity snatched the device away and put it back in her pocket. That only increased his suspicion. Usually, his cousin was all too ready to show off her wonderful inventions.

“Come along Lei er…Lionel!” she exclaimed, to forestall any awkward questions. A young man staggered through the door carrying a mountain of equipment. He was short, with Asian features, freckles, close-cropped hair and a large walrus moustache.

“Ben, this is Lionel, my new apprentice.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Ben politely, breathing a sigh of the relief that Lionel would not be able to shake hands while carrying all those boxes.

“Good morning, Mr er… Thackerey is it?” replied Lionel. His high voice made him sound younger than he looked.

“I didn’t think you did apprentices, Vee. Not after…”

“I changed my mind. Lionel’s got unique talents and lots of potential. Now, where’s the fire?”

Ben frowned. He was sure that he had seen Lionel before, but couldn’t place the face. Then again, he had never had a good memory for faces. Wolfe gave the new apprentice a jolly greeting and a knowing grin, which seemed to disconcert the young man. Mal smirked at them both. Clearly Wolfe had some history with Lionel, but Ben didn’t want to know.

“The… _phenomenon_ is upstairs,” he told Verity. “Follow me.”

“Let me help you,” Wolfe volunteered gallantly, as Lionel struggled with his armful of boxes towards the stairs.

“No,” said Verity, holding up her hand to stop him. “It’s all part of the apprenticeship. Let her, I mean him, carry them himself. It’s good character building.”

“Whatever you say boss,” muttered Lionel. 

The two hunters followed Ben up the stairs to the door of the terrible haunted room. Ben drew his cousin aside, so he could have a quiet word without being overheard.

“Be careful in there, Vee. I think this might be… be…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “…old age magic.”

“You think?” said Verity, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

“No, listen to me! Wolfe was unaffected until he put down the iron poker! And O’Malley passed out and had a vision. I think he saw the… the Maelstrom.”

“The Maelstrom?”

“Yes it’s the…”

“And how do you know about the Maelstrom?”

Ben was suddenly flustered.

“Ah… I may have read about it. In… in… er… somewhere.”

“In the Roynish Manuscript you mean?”

“Um…”

“The dread ancient manuscript containing the eldritch secrets of old age magic to which access is strictly forbidden, except for senior wizards who must obtain specific permission from the Ethics Committee to access it in the secure vaults from which it must never be removed. _That_ Roynish Manuscript?”

“Ah…”

“Oh, stop quiddling. As though every student wizard worth their salt for the last five hundred years hasn’t sneaked down to the vaults for the cheap thrill of looking at Forbidden Knowledge that Man was not meant to know.”

“I must admit… Just a minute. How do _you_ know about it?”

“First, Forbidden Knowledge that Man was Not Meant to Know obviously doesn’t apply to me. And I’m a member of the Royal Society of Hunters, established by Queen Elizabeth to mop up the mess you wizards leave behind. We need to know all the stupid and irresponsible idiocies you get up to – and that includes the forbidden old age magic as well as the regular stuff.”

“But surely they can’t be unwise enough to allow free access to something so dangerous as the Roynish Manuscript?”

“Please. I’m Verity Cunningham. I didn’t get to be the Greatest Hunter in the World by following other people’s rules.”

“So you think it’s old age magic too. How can I help?”

“By staying out of my way downstairs until I’ve dealt with the problem.” Ben never got used to being told that no matter how often people said it to him.

\-----------*

Wolfe and Mal were still waiting in the sitting room when Ben came down the stairs slowly, with many a worried backward glance. It was not that he had no confidence in his cousin. It was just that he didn’t share her unlimited confidence in her own ability.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” asked Wolfe, picking up on Ben’s unease.

“Might be better if we weren’t ‘ere,” suggested Mal. “We could go somewhere a bit safer. Up the pub mebbe?”

“No, I think we must stay here,” replied Ben, taking a seat. “If only to drag them to safety if things go wrong.”

“What could this be?” asked Wolfe. “Perhaps something like that terrible secret we uncovered in Dalrymple and Waldenmeier’s vault?”

“No, I’m sure this is completely different. Anyway, it turned out that the secret wasn’t so terrible after all.”

“Ye weren’t th’ one tha’ hadda drink’ tha’ stuff,” growled Mal.

“No, this is far more dreadful.”

“I gotta drink sumthin’ worse than that?”

“No, I mean the _situation_ is more dreadful. Illicit poteen will not be involved.” It was difficult to tell whether Mal was relieved or disappointed.

“You said it was a maelstrom.” said Wolfe. “My English is not so good. Is not a maelstrom the same as a whirlpool?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Ben, “except this is not _a_ maelstrom. This is _the_ Maelstrom. It refers to a particular… phenomenon.”

“But what is it? Why does it scare you so?”

“Yesterday I would have told you it was only a myth. A fairy tale to scare children on All Hallows’ Eve. Today… I’m not so sure.” He paused as though unwilling to continue; as though giving voice to his fears would somehow make them real. “You know what the Anchor is? It is the thing that gives Magic structure, if you like, the well spring from which all Magic originates. The foundation of our modern civilisation. The source of the power that is the basis of our rational and reasoning world. The Maelstrom is the opposite. It is the pit of despair that sucks the light and reason and sanity out of the world. It is the opposite of true magic, but it too has power; a power that can be called into the world. A power that was harnessed by the barbaric peoples who inhabited these islands in the stone age. It is the source of the evil old age magic that was defeated so long ago.”

“This is not the first time you have spoken of this. It is linked to the ancient stone circles is it not?”

“That’s right. For thousands of years the stones and ley lines of old age magic held the world under their evil sway. But true magic – the power of air and light and hope and life was also in this land, and in a constant struggle with the old age earth magic of darkness and despair and death. Finally, true magic was victorious and the adherents of the old magic were driven into the dark places of the world. It’s likely that our folk tales of fae creatures and fairy realms are distant memories of these battles, and encounters with the defeated evil that lingered in the shadows. A key factor in the war was said to be the use of iron weapons by the forces of light, an element against which old age magic is helpless. Remember that you were unaffected by whatever was in that room while you were carrying that iron poker? That was one of the points that made me suspect the presence of this nightmare from the past.”

“But if this is an ancient evil, an evil that was banished and defeated long ago, then how is it here now at the Anchor, in the Witch House? At the very heart of true magic?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Mal suddenly sprang from his seat.

“There’s summin’ ‘ere!”

“Yes of course,” began Ben. “We already…”

“Nah, I mean there’s summin’ else ‘ere. ‘er upstairs! She’s brought summin’ wi’ ‘er!”

“You mean her scientific instruments are…”

“This ain’t no science. This is more o’ th’ same stuff!”

The three of them looked up at the ceiling in concern.

\----------------*

Finally, the door closed behind Verity and Lionel and they could breathe a sigh of relief, Verity because Ben hadn’t suspected anything, and Lionel because he could finally put down all the equipment. He stretched his tired limbs and then, out of habit, checked that his moustache was still secure.

“I think Wolfe recognised me, boss,” he told Verity.

“I’m sure he did,” she replied. “No need to worry. He’s a sport. Now, help me unpack.”

Together they opened the box of equipment and removed the random tools and machine parts from the top of the box that hid what lay beneath. As far as Lionel was concerned this was not what he had signed for. He was an engineer, who created intricate mechanisms based on sound rational scientific calculations. The candles, small brass cauldron, dagger and earthen pitcher of water didn’t count as science as far as he was concerned. Still, his boss had explained that if he was to become the second greatest hunter in the world he needed to learn all aspects of the profession – and that included some of the more unorthodox methods eschewed by her more prosaic colleagues like Harriet Barber. Especially Harriet Barber.

“Feel anything amiss?” asked Verity. 

“No. Apart from all this mess,” replied Lionel, indicating the shredded wallpaper still littering the floor.

“Hm, if Cousin Benjamin left the room in this state, the situation must be particularly serious. Excellent. That means the iron bracers are working just fine. Now take yours off and let’s see what happens.”

“Me? Why am I always the one who has to take the risk?”

“Apprentice, remember? And because if there’s a problem, there’s more chance that I will be able to rescue you that you will be able to rescue me.”

It crossed Lionel’s mind that it was optimistic of his boss to believe that he would actually try to rescue her if things went wrong, rather than simply running screaming for the exit, but he was wise enough not to say that out loud. Not without a certain misgiving, he took off the iron bracer around his wrist.

“Feel anything?”

“No… yes. I feel as though there’s someone watching me – watching me and wishing me harm.” He swallowed audibly. “It… it’s right behind me isn’t it?”

“No Lei. There is nothing behind you. At all. It’s all in your imagination. Lionel spun round. There was, as Verity had assured him, nothing standing behind him.

“Now you’ve said it, it doesn’t feel so strong anymore. Do you think that it’s… wait! Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shush!”

Lionel strained to listen. He could hear voices, just on the limit of hearing. The sound of Vee arranging her equipment, or the distant clatter of a cart going past in the street was enough to drown it out, but when all was quiet, he was sure he can hear people talking. Not whispering but talking very far away. The more he strained to hear it, the more it was merely the background noise of Widdershins, or a slight remaining tinnitus after that unfortunate incident with the exploding bullock ice sculpture, but every time he tried to dismiss it the voices were back, frustratingly just out of reach, just too quiet to hear what they were saying. He found it more disturbing than he could account for. He tried to explain it to his boss. Verity waved a dismissive hand.

“Not too bad then. That confirms that there’s old age magic involved, although my detector already told me that. Where do you think the problem is?”

“Could the fabric of the building be imbued?”

“This is a new house so it’s unlikely that the problem is anything to do with it. Anyway, old age magic doesn’t work like that. The most likely hypothesis is that this is something from the old Witch House.”

“But that was burned down! Is there anything of it left?”

“Probably not much. In olden times English houses were made with wattle and daub.”

“Wattle and daub?”

“Straw, sticks and cow dung. Good flammable material with no long-term resilience and poor magic retention capacity. Ideal material for building a house because it’s cheap and readily available. They’d only be one solid permanent part made of brick – the part that had to be fireproof. The chimney and fireplaces. Most of the original witch house may have been burned down, but central chimney remained – I’ve seen the lithographs from last century. They built the new house around it. And where’s all the weirdness happening? Oh look! There’s the fireplace.”

With a dramatic flourish, Verity whipped away the sheet to reveal the intricate panelling beneath.

“But all that panelling is new,” protested Lionel.

“Yep. But the brickwork beneath is old.”

“We remove the panelling?”

“Tut, tut. That would be like disarming an unexploded mortar shell with a hammer and chisel. No, we’re going to make whatever’s in there come to us. It’s time to go fishing my young apprentice!”

“Fishing?”

“We lure it out with a nice juicy worm. When it bites it finds that there’s a hook inside. And then we reel it in.” 

Lionel began to set up the equipment. Five candles in stone holders were arranged, equally spaced around the circumference of a circle. Verity tied complicated knots into a piece of cord while muttering words in a forgotten language under her breathe. Lionel stretched it between the candles so that it formed the shape of a five-pointed star. It was best not to use chalk, which left traces that led to awkward questions no matter how hard you tried to erase the lines. Verity placed the brass cauldron in the centre of the pentagram and then filled it with the water from the pitcher. Lionel took the broom and swept all the wallpaper shreds into the corner before she lit the candles. What they were about to attempt might be risky, but accidentally setting the house on fire would be too embarrassing for words.

“Right,” said Verity, once she was sure everything was set up correctly. “Let’s get this sorted.”

“Dunno boss.” Lionel still looked unhappy. “This is all magic, and not even approved magic. Shouldn’t we be using Science to fix this?”

“Pah, remember what the philosopher said! ‘Any sufficiently analysed magic is indistinguishable from Science’! And it’s time freethinkers like us started analysing! We can’t let red tape halt the March of Progress! Don’t worry! What can possibly go wrong?! Now sit inside the circle with me and hold my hand, that’s right.”

Lionel did as he was told, not without misgivings. He wondered why his boss was so eager to embrace this forbidden knowledge when she was always so dismissive of regular magic. Perhaps it was the fact that it _was_ forbidden that made it so attractive. Not only that, you had to be a wizard to use regular magic. If you weren’t born with the talent, then you’d never be able to cast a spell. The fact that she was not a wizard made Verity hate people who were. How dare magic ignore Verity Cunningham, the World’s Greatest Hunter! She’d show them! She’d show them all!! You needed no talent at all to invoke old age magic; anyone who knew the rituals could call it up. Verity could never resist the temptation of all that power. It was all so easy. The difficult part was controlling it once you had it.

Verity closed her eyes and began an incantation.

_With earth and water, air and fire,  
By blade and bowl and circle round,  
We come to you with our desire:  
Let all that is hidden now be found!_

Then she picked up the dagger and jabbed the point into Lionel’s thumb.

“Ow!” he exclaimed, unsuccessfully trying to pull his hand from Verity’s grip.

“Oh, don’t make a fuss,” Verity told him, directing the drops of blood into brass cauldron. “It’s only a little pinprick.”

The blood floated in the clear water but rather than dispersing, swirled and formed itself into a eldritch symbol.

“When you said we were going fishing,” complained Lionel, “you didn’t tell me I was going to be the worm!”

“But look!” gloated Verity. “We’ve caught our fish!”

Smoke poured from one of the panels around the fireplace and coalesced into a shadowy figure. It wasn’t that the figure was in shadow – more that it was composed of shadow; trails of smoke that weren’t solid but a swirling column of dense black vapour. It was approximately human, if you ignored the legs too short and the arms too long for the body. And the fact that it had horns, hooves and a tail.

“Don’t worry,” said Verity complacently, “it doesn’t have substantive form.”

The creature lunged towards Lionel, who was suddenly very aware that it was his blood in the cauldron and he had not replaced his protective iron bracer.

“Boss! Do something!”

“Pah,” Vee assured him, releasing his hand. “With that anatomy it’s bound to be a vegetarian. Now, distract it while I perform the Dissolution Ritual.”

The monster grew, like the smoke above a kindling fire, towering over Lionel, its insubstantial horns brushing the ceiling.

“What do you mean, _distract it?!”_ exclaimed Lionel, backing away into the corner of the room.

Vee consulted a piece of parchment from her waistcoat pocket. As she began reading an ominous chant the monster froze, paralysed by the incantation.

“OGTHROD AI’F GEB’L-EE’H YOB SODDOFF ‘NGAH’NG AI’Y ZHRO!”

The monster made a rude gesture in Verity’s direction, then turned back to Lionel, flowing around him, trying to force its way into his nose and mouth. Verity adjusted her pince-nez on her nose and squinted at her scribbled handwriting in annoyance.

“Odd, that should have worked.”

“BOSS! HELP!”

“Keep it down Lei, I’m trying to concentrate here.”

“BOSS! IT’S…!! AGGHH!! GLURKK!!!” 

“Ah, got it,” Vee announced with a satisfied smirk. She tried again.

“OGTHROD AI’F GEB’L-EE’H YOG SOBBOTH ‘NGAH’NG AI’Y ZHRO!”

This time when she ended the chant the black smoke of the monster glowed brightly as if lit by an internal fire, and then collapsed in a torrent of green slime, most of which sprayed over Lionel. He screamed as his jacket gave off acrid fumes and began to fall apart.

“AAGGHH! BOSS!! I’M MELTING!!! _I’M MELTING!!!”_

Vee sighed in disappointment. She had not expected her new apprentice to be so high maintenance. She picked up the cauldron and poured the contents over Lionel, washing away the corrosive slime.

“Don’t make such a fuss. It’s only your clothes. Hasn’t got on your skin anywhere? No? Good. There, nothing to worry about. Start clearing our things away while I look for the source of the problem.”

Lionel crawled away to the corner of the room furthest from the fireplace, curled up in a ball and started whimpering. Verity frowned. Why was she always the one that ended up doing all the work? Her first priority was to put the magic paraphernalia out of sight in their box, hidden beneath the tools. It would not do for her cousin to see it and start asking stupid questions. Then she got down to business, prising away the panel from which the monster had emerged to reveal the ancient brickwork beneath. It didn’t take the World’s Greatest Hunter long to find the secret compartment. Of course, it would have been good training for her apprentice to open it while she stood at a safe distance, but Lionel was still _hors de combat_. She decided she could take the risk herself and carefully removed the false brick. The items concealed inside the small cavity were much as she had expected. Selecting the iron tongs from the tool bag she carefully transferred them to the special container she had prepared. Sure that the items were safe, she went out onto the landing and was gratified to see Benjy and his minions huddled at the bottom of the stairs like a gaggle of old women, looking up with worried faces.

“It’s alright Benjy,” she called down. “It’s safe to come up now.”

Ben and Wolfe ran up the stairs. Mal followed, somewhat slower.

“We heard screaming,” said Wolfe. “Are either of you hurt?”

“Oh, that was just Lei er… Lionel being overly melodramatic. Nothing to worry about. Give her ten minutes to get her breath back and she’ll be fine.”

“Perhaps a cup of tea to calm her nerves?” suggested Wolfe.

“Or mebbe a shot o’ whiskey,” added Mal.

“Don’t go spoiling he… him. He’ll need to toughen up if he’s going to get his licence. Come and see what caused the problem.” Ben and Wolfe followed her back into the haunted room. Mal cautiously stuck his head around the door. None of them felt any ill effects. The evil presence had gone.

Verity pointed triumphantly to the object she had retrieved. She was a little miffed that Wolfe was more interested in looking after Lionel, still curled up in a corner of the room, than congratulating her on her cleverness. Ben adjusted his glasses and peered into the wooden box. The object was sitting on a bed of what appeared to be small yellow flower petals.

“Good heavens!”

He was looking at a slab of unpolished stone, perhaps a foot long and nine inches wide, on which was painted a life-sized picture of a human hand, the fingers spread. No, not painted. This was cruder than painting. It was though someone had placed their hand on the rock and then sprayed it with blue paint, leaving an unpainted shadow of hand and lower arm. Mal peered over Ben’s shoulder and could not prevent a shudder.

“Tha’s like I saw reachin’ out f’ me. Just afore I blacked out. Wha’ is it?”

“That is a Neolithic cave painting which…” began Ben.

“A crude magical incantation created by the race that lived on these islands in ancient times,” interrupted Verity. “The same people who raised the stone circles. Now just an archaic nightmare. These paintings are sometimes found in the remote caves where they practised their abominable rituals. Doubtless, this is the source of all your old age magic problems. An echo of old magic, from before the dawn of history, still potent enough to come forth and wreak havoc when awoken by its old enemy.”

“Then why ain’t it in a cave?”

“Obviously, because someone has chiselled it out of the rock and concealed it in the brickwork of the chimney.”

“But why would anyone do such a thing?” Ben protested.

Verity waved a piece of yellowed parchment under his nose. A crude child’s drawing of a sun with a smiley face was drawn on it and underneath was scrawled:

_Ye Magikal Power? No Thank Ye!_

“This was in the secret compartment with the cursed stone. Looks like a little surprise left by the anti-witch fanatics of the Commonwealth after they’d burned down the original Witch House, ready to entrap any witch or wizard who ever returned here and rebuilt the house.”

“But is it safe?”

“Of course! It’s in an iron-bound rowan wood box, filled with the petals of _Hypericum perforatum_. Guaranteed to supress any old age magic.”

“Now we destroy it? Perhaps dissolve it in acid?”

“Don’t be silly Benjy! Now I take it round to Old Frank at the Royal Society! Do you have any idea of the bounty for old age magic?! Harry Barber will be so jealous of me when I tell her about this!”

\-----------------*

Half an hour later Ben stood with Verity at the door of the Witch House. A mug of strong German coffee with a generous dash of medicinal Irish whiskey had restored Lionel sufficiently for him to carry all the equipment back to the Royal Society. Wolfe and Mal had insisted on helping him with the boxes, especially the one carrying the dreaded old age magic which, despite Verity’s assurances, he was strangely reluctant to touch. In truth, Mal had to be persuaded with a combination of bribes and emotional blackmail, but in the end he agreed to help. Once they had gone, Ben had the opportunity he wanted to have a quiet word with his cousin.

“Thanks for solving this Vee.”

“Just another job for the World’s Greatest Hunter. Now I’ll be able to add ‘solutions to problems too difficult for the Widdershins Witch’ on my promotional material. My invoice will be in the post.”

“You’re charging us? But you said you were getting paid by the Royal Society!”

“You don’t want to pay? No problem. I can put it right back.”

“At least I hope you’ll give us a family discount. But there is one thing that I thought was odd. Why did that enchanted stone affect different people in different ways?”

“Why shouldn’t it? It’s a thing of chaos after all. There’s no reason it should work the same way every time. Doubtless it gets bored by repetition.”

“Lucky for us you invented that old age magic detector.”

“Ah… I am an engineering genius you know,” replied Verity uneasily. Ben would never be a poker player and she could tell the conversation was veering towards dangerous ground.

“Yes, genius indeed. A complicated clockwork device full of fast-moving precision cogwheels, with no sign of any clockwork or springs…”

“Engineering genius is…”

“…but a glittering shard of crystal at its heart.” Verity stepped back into the house and closed the front door in case they were overheard.

“According to the Roynish Manuscript,” Ben continued, “the power of crystals is the most dangerous and treacherous aspect of old age magic. It powers your device doesn’t it? And you used old age magic to contain the incarnation called from that stone didn’t you?”

“What of it?”

“What of it?! What are you thinking?!”

“It’s like any other source of power, say steam or fire. Yes, it can be dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing but handle it properly and it’s perfectly safe.”

“Safe?! Crystal energy will eat away your life force, a little bit a time, until you’re nothing but a walking puppet!”

“You’ve got to fight fire with fire.”

“No, you’ve got to fight fire with buckets of water! Trust me on this! Tell me! How many other of your ‘engineering genius’ devices have old age magic at their heart?!”

“Don’t be such a worryguts. Remember that history is written by the victors. Our ancestors may have defeated old age magic to replace it with your mundane version, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it was bad. It was just different.”

“Of course it was different! It’s different because at its core it was fundamentally evil!”

“Pah, evil is all relative. No doubt the old age magic warlocks would have said that your magic was evil. It’s just a matter of perspective.”

“No Vee. No, it isn’t.” A pleading note had entered Ben’s voice. But Verity Cunningham, the World’s Greatest Hunter, had already turned her back on her cousin and, with a dismissive wave goodbye, opened the door and strode confidently down the street towards the Royal Society to collect her bounty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Characters and locations from Widdershins are the creation of Kate Ashwin. Old Age Magic ritual courtesy of S.J. Tucker’s 'Witch’s Rune'. Dissolution incantation courtesy of H.P. Lovecraft’s 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward'._


End file.
